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For the man who was about to become the political leader of the European Union, it was not the most encouraging of metaphors.

iStockphoto / FN montage

Better together: the best chance for European stability lies in the UK opting to stay in

Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, which assumed the rotating six-month EU presidency in January, said in November that the EU – beset by multiple crises from migration to the euro – risked collapsing like the Roman Empire.

In fact, a more accurate comparison for the EU’s circumstances would be not the imperial edifice built on Rome but the Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne in 800 AD, which comprised hundreds of semi-sovereign principalities and fiefs scattered across Europe until the early 19th century. The Holy Roman Empire, an amorphous framework without a clear and stable core that eventually fell apart because of the growth of its regional power centres, might well represent Europe’s disjointed future.

In the EU, one of those unbalancing power centres is the euro, the single currency introduced in 1999, which itself – in contrast to its intended role of creating stability and prosperity – has generated considerable acrimony by opening a perilous split between creditor and debtor states.

Britain, even though not in the euro, appears to be playing a full role in strengthening centrifugal forces contributing to Union-wide disarray.

David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, was perhaps trying to strike a constructive note when, setting out plans for a referendum on British membership of the EU in January 2013, said he wanted “a better deal for Europe”. But his initiative has since taken on deeper resonance. Partly for reasons that are not of the British Prime Minister’s making, it could mark the descent of a persistent black cloud over Europe.

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The referendum, a domestic device for Cameron to defuse dissent over Europe within his Conservative party, has become a major source of division with, and within, the rest of Europe.

The decision over a British exit looks likely to be – along with the US presidential election in November – the big political event of 2016. Cameron may be seen by historians as having helped strengthen the forces of dissonance and dislocation sweeping across the EU.

The trend has been strengthened by recent developments, including the crisis over refugees. Europe has shown disarray over how to handle Turkey, which is on the front line of migration from the Middle East – although the EU has now achieved an expensive compromise aimed at stemming flows in exchange for large sums of money and a promise to bring the Turks into the EU more quickly than intended.

Political fragmentation has also been in evidence in the last few months of election results across Europe, including in Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, with a swing towards Eurosceptic parties nearly everywhere.

Divisions have been inflamed, too, by the controversial efforts of the European Central Bank to resuscitate inflation and growth in Europe, following a cycle of sluggish, and highly disparate growth, and high unemployment.

The ECB decisions on March 10 to cut interest rates, already negative, still further and to buy more government and private sector bonds, have been seen as discriminating against the saving culture of the creditor nations led by Germany and the Netherlands and unfairly helping the hard-up debtor states, principally Italy, as well as other southern countries.

These disparate trends have a common denominator. They show that decision-making bonds among EU states are becoming progressively weaker, partly because – just as with the Holy Roman Empire – no one is actually in charge.

The Russian invasion of Crimea, the emergence of Islamic State and the European refugee drama have made more visible the security aspect of Britain’s membership or non-membership of the EU. A prime reason Cameron, despite his strong underlying streak of Euroscepticism, says that Britain needs to remain in the EU is that he feels the UK’s foreign security could otherwise suffer.

Most European partners also wish Britain to stay in, and this remains the most likely outcome of the June 23 referendum. Yet, at a time of depressed spirits, cutting a deal with the rest of Europe on special status for Britain has been much more difficult than Cameron might reasonably have expected three years ago.

The underlying message from ministers and officials in Berlin is that the integration of Europe has reached a high-water mark; the future of the Union lies with sovereign nation states co-operating with each other, not in an over-arching “super-EU”. This seems in line with voters’ preferences, highlighted by regional election swings in three German federal states on March 13 to the new anti-euro, anti-immigration party, Alternative für Deutschland.

In the event of a Brexit, the UK would leave behind an even more unstable EU than the one to which it currently adheres. Whatever the rhetoric about Europe needing more centralisation and greater elements of political union to cope with its diverse strains, the forces impinging on Europe are pushing in the opposite direction towards diversity, divisiveness and perhaps dismemberment.

The best chance for Europe staying together, at least for now, lies in the UK, however reluctantly, opting to stay in.

David Marsh is managing director of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. An updated edition of Europe’s Deadlock, his book on the euro crisis, is out now